IRS Criminal Investighations

[Lee B]

"The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation unit opened more than 2,550 criminal investigations, identified over $31 billion from tax and financial crimes, and saw a 90.6% conviction rate on cases accepted for prosecution during fiscal year 2022, even as its agents came under political attack, according to a report released Thursday."

"The conviction rate in fiscal 2022 was similar to other fiscal years. Of the over 2,500 criminal cases initiated, 71.7% of investigations were tax or tax-related crimes. The remaining crimes included financial crimes tied to narcotics, human smuggling, child pornography, bank secrecy and money laundering. Lee noted that in April, IRS-CI led the takedown of Hydra, one of the largest darknet marketplaces of narcotics and other illicit goods in the history of the U.S. government, and in February it seized $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency from the Bitfinex hack of 2016. "That was the largest single financial seizure in the history of government," said Lee."

"IRS-CI also handled 840 cases of COVID fraud in recent years and is just shy of 400 indictments, part of a 98.9% conviction rate in that area, with an average sentence of three years for the 180 cases sentenced to date."